Palestinian Right of Return: Sacred, Legal, and Possible

Summary

Salman Abu Sitta argues that the Palestinian refugees’ Right of Return is sacred to the refugees themselves, solid in law — above all UN General Assembly Resolution 194 paragraph 11, read as giving return plus compensation and restitution, not return or compensation — and physically possible, because the land from which they were expelled in 1948 is still largely empty of Jews: on his Areas A/B/C demography only 154,000 rural Jews live on the refugees’ land (Area C), so the return of the Lebanon and Gaza refugees, his two test scenarios, raises Israel’s population density only modestly and leaves Jews above 50% even in Area C (Palestinian Right of Return: Sacred, Legal, and Possible, lines 1126-1235). The argument is built on his expanded database of 531 ethnically cleansed localities, from which he derives 804,767 refugees in 1948 (a second figure, 804,069, is given in the same chapter’s projection table) and 17,166,831 dunums of cleansed-village land, and on a phase-by-phase account in which 89% of the depopulation is attributed to direct Israeli military assault, 10% to psychological war and 1% to the villagers’ own initiative (lines 295-321, lines 323-659, lines 1595-1694). The book closes with practical machinery for return: because no Jew holds title to Palestinian land and the leases expire in 1998, a single transfer of custody to a proposed Palestine Land Society would restore the land without thousands of court cases (lines 1501-1594).

What the file is

The Palestine Land Society web presentation of the second and revised edition (Palestine Return Centre, London, May 1999) of Abu Sitta’s monograph, downloaded from https://www.plands.org/en/books-reports/books/palestine-right-of-return (access basis: author-copy) as an HTML original with a supplied text copy. The text copy’s header states it was combined from that page and 17 linked pages, fetched 2026-10-06 (lines 1-3).
The title page gives “Salman Abu Sitta, May, 1999” (line 28). The Publishers’ Note calls the work the “second and revised edition” of the acclaimed first edition, reprinted for its success, popular demand and rapid political developments (lines 142-154). The References list the work’s own Arabic precursor, “Right of Return; Sacred, Legal and Possible” (in Arabic), Al-Mustaqbal Al-Arabi, Beirut, Vol. 19, No. 208, pp. 4-38, June 1996 (lines 1755-1762).
Contents, in order: Publishers’ Note; Introduction; Compilation of the Depopulated Villages List; The Unfolding of the Holocaust; Why the Refugees Left; Military Aspects of the Expulsion; Plunder and Destruction; War Crimes; The Monetary Value of Seized Palestinian Property; The Right Of Return: A Basic Right; Is the Right Of Return Feasible?; The Status of Palestinian Land in Israel; The Israeli Position; Resettlement Schemes; Practical Steps for the Return of the Refugees; Summary and Conclusions; References (lines 32-66).
Text quality: the web text is generally clean, but the tables and figures it names (Table-1 to Table-11, a map and Photos 1-4) are not reproduced as data in either copy — only the figures stated in the prose and in the three small tables embedded in the text (the population projections, the land totals and Falah’s village-status table) are available. Several passages are defective in the original web page itself, identically in both copies, most seriously a spliced sentence in the Summary and Conclusions (see Open questions). Each chapter page repeats the full chapter list and site navigation; those repetitions are part of the line count.

Section by section

Publishers’ Note (unsigned, Palestine Return Centre, “PRC, London, May 1999.”, lines 130-156): the Allied defeat of Nazi Germany brought peace to Europe but set in motion the conflict since 1948; “By carving out a state in Palestine for their unwanted Jews, the victorious powers effectually ignited a conflict which emptied Palestine of half its Arab population.” The refugee issue is fundamentally political, derived from breach of international law, not only humanitarian; the Zionist elite’s role in expelling the Palestinians is documented in Israeli, American and UN sources; Israel’s Eichmann trial itself classified expulsions as “war crimes” and “crimes against humanity”. Return is a fundamental humanitarian, legal and national right, not a privilege or favour; Israel’s linkage of return to settlement of issues with its Arab neighbours is untenable; neither time nor Israel’s creation nullified the right — the Crimean Tartars, deported internally by the Communist authorities, were repatriated after the Soviet collapse. Repatriation is the international community’s obligation as well as Israel’s, and resettlement elsewhere should be resisted.
Introduction (lines 159-232): half a century after 1948 the dispossession remains the major issue of Middle East politics despite five major wars and upheavals in all adjacent countries. Israeli presentation of the conflict has been more skilful and powerful, serving to justify conquest and expulsion and to portray Israel’s heroic image to the West; recently Israeli historians — Morris (1987, 1990), Shlaim, Segev, Pappe and Flapan — have re-examined 1948 from released Israeli documents. The monograph re-examines the 1948 War “which led to the Palestinian Holocaust (al-Nakba)”, then shows how return can be effected “with the minimum population dislocation”.
Compilation of the Depopulated Villages List (lines 233-322): an expanded list of 531 localities ethnically cleansed, each entry giving Arabic name, Palestine Grid location, district, population, land area, depopulation date, reasons for exodus, Israeli offensive, defenders and massacres (if any). Morris’s four waves of cleansing are reported (December 1947-March 1948; April-11 June 1948 under Plan Dalet; 9 July-15 October 1948; and the breaking of the Second Truce by Yo’av and Hiram to November 1948), followed by the invasion of Egyptian territory to al-Arish and of the Negev. Morris identified 369 villages; Walid Khalidi (1992) listed 418 villages with a dictionary entry for each, deliberately excluding towns and places without permanent structures, and excluded 151 villages that appeared in other lists (Al-Arif 399, Nijm and Muammer 443, Saleh 472). Abu Sitta’s 531 includes towns and, fully for the first time, tribal land: over 100,000 people in 1948 cultivating about 5,000,000 dunums, an average sub-tribe (Ashira) of 1,200 people and about 60,000 dunums. Table-1 (not reproduced) compares the lists by district; this study adds 78 new tribes and 9 Police Stations (typical community 40, up to 100, with permanent structures, often a school and trading post), and includes some villages that were scenes of massacres although ultimately repopulated by other villagers.
The Unfolding of the Holocaust (lines 323-559): §2.1 compiles the dispossessed population from the Village Statistics of 1944/1945 upgraded at 3.8% net natural increase per year for 4 years, as per Khalidi (1992, p.581). The Beer Sheba Bedouin, fixed at 66,000 for many years in Mandate statistics and listed as neither Muslims nor Christians, are re-estimated from Al-Arif (1933), corrected for the traditional reduction of the female count, and checked against Dajani’s 1946 field survey; the refugee sum is 804,767, excluding internal refugees (estimated at 250,000 in 1998) and those who lost their livelihood because their village land fell in Israeli-occupied territory while their houses remained in Arab territory (16% of the primary list). Abu-Lughod’s (1971) Mandate-based total of 1,398,000 (non-Jewish) Palestinians in all Palestine becomes 1,441,177 with the new Bedouin estimate. Growth rates of 3.8% for the refugees and 3.63% for Palestinians as a whole give the projection table: all Palestinians 1,441,177 (1948), 7,689,621 (1995), 7,788,185 (1998); 1948 refugees 804,069 (1948), 4,645,248 (1995), 4,942,121 (1998) — the 1948 figure differs from the 804,767 given earlier in the chapter. Peretz’s 6,192,153 (1995) and McDowall’s 6,882,000 (1995) are treated as underestimates; Brand’s (1988) distribution is adjusted to Abu Sitta’s total, including for the 1990 Kuwait exodus but not the 1995 Libya exodus. Of the 4,942,121 refugees, 3,602,121 (73%) are registered with UNRWA (1998), about 1 million of them in camps. In summary 46% of Palestinians live within Mandate Palestine, 42% in border Arab countries and about 12% elsewhere; 88% live in or adjacent to Palestine.
The Unfolding of the Holocaust, §2.2-2.3 (lines 323-559): Palestinian land of the cleansed villages is 17,166,831 d. (85%); Jewish land including public land, from Hadawi (1988), 1,682,000 d. (08%); Arab land including public land of villages remaining in Israel 1,474,169 d. (07%); total area of Israel 20,323,000 d., of which 18,641,000 d. (92%) is Palestinian (17,166,831 + 1,474,169, computed). The Palestine Conciliation Commission’s expert Jarvis estimated Arab losses at 5,194,091 d., omitting Beer Sheba and counting only “settled” land; with Beer Sheba (12,577,000 d.) his figure would be 17,771,091 d. By district (Table-3, not reproduced): the largest cleansing was in Jaffa, Haifa and Jerusalem, the most cleansed localities in Beer Sheba, al-Ramla and Safad, the largest land in Beer Sheba, then Gaza, Haifa, al-Ramla and Safad; refugees came 42% from the central region, 34% north, 24% south. Chronologically (Tables 4-5, not reproduced), 213 localities (43% of localities, 54% of refugees with known dates) were overrun while Palestine was still under the British Mandate Government, largely under Plan Dalet; by the First Truce of 11 June 1948, 291 (59%) localities were cleansed and about 65% of the refugees were homeless before the Arab regular armies could act. The Ten Days (9-18 July 1948) added 82 (17%), the Third Round (15 October 1948-6 January 1949) 98 (20%), and 60 were cleansed thereafter or are undated. No villagers left during cessations of hostilities — one village in the First Truce, five in the Second (operations Shoter and Nikayon) — and each phase opened with a massacre: Dayr Yassin and 16 others under Dalet; Lydda at the opening of the Ten Days, with 60,000 inhabitants of Lydda and Ramla cleansed “on the express orders of Yizhak Rabin”, followed by al-Tira, Tantoura and Ijzim; 13 in Yo’av and Hiram in October.
The Unfolding of the Holocaust, §2.4 Massacres (lines 323-559): a massacre is defined as the killing of a group of civilians with intent; Table-6 (not reproduced) lists 34 reported massacres, excluding individual murders, mass killing in air-raids (especially October-December 1948), killing of prisoners of war, unrecorded massacres and massacres after the 1949 Armistice Agreements. Deir Yassin (Friday 9 April 1948): over 120 Stern and Irgun men attacked at 4.30 a.m. in “Operation Unity”, murdered 254 Palestinians and blew up more than fifteen houses; eyewitness Muhammad Aref Sammour and British Assistant Inspector-General Richard Catling are quoted on bayoneted women, cut-off fingers and arms, and raped and slaughtered schoolgirls and butchered infants; Begin’s order of the day congratulated the attackers. Yosef Weitz’s 1940 transfer statement is quoted at length (see Key passages). al-Dawayima (Hebron District, population 4,300), the biggest and least publicised massacre: on the afternoon of Friday 29 October 1948 three units of the 89th Battalion (8th Brigade) occupied it without a fight and killed about 80 to 100 in the first wave (a soldier’s testimony, cited by Morris 1987, p.222); over fifty villagers were killed in the mosque and others at the Tor al Zagh caves; UN observers, admitted two weeks later after three refusals, found houses still smoking; the Mukhtar’s list gave 580 killed, the Hadashot correspondent of 24 August 1984 estimated 332, and Ben-Gurion’s diary noted “a rumor about 70-80 persons slaughtered”. The pattern was to surround a village from three sides, leave the fourth open, kill those determined to stay and let survivors spread the news; Sa’sa suffered two massacres (15 February and 30 October 1948). Of the 34, 17 fell in April-May under the Mandate and 17 after; 24 were in the north, five central and five south. Returnees were shot as infiltrators, and Israeli use of bacteriological warfare — poisoning wells with malaria, typhus and dysentery — is asserted on Ben-Gurion’s war diary (p.365) and IDF historian Uri Mileshtin (as printed), interviewed in Hadashot, 13 August 1993.
Why the Refugees Left (lines 560-653): the claim that Palestinians left on Arab government orders is a myth already put to rest by Khalidi (1988) and Childers and confirmed by Morris (1987), who found no sign of such incitement. Of Morris’s 330 assessed villages: expulsion by Jewish forces 41 (12%), military assault 195 (59%), imminent attack after a neighbouring village fell 46 (14%) — 282 (85%) by direct military action; extended to the expanded list, 442 (89%). The “Whispering Campaign” depopulated 12 villages and fear of Jewish attack 38 more (50, 10%); five villages (1%) left on a local leader’s orders and 35 could not be determined. Ethnic cleansing is therefore the direct result of total war by military and psychological means.
Military Aspects of the Expulsion (lines 654-747): the Zionist force numbered at least 65,000 in the first six months of 1948 (Khalidi 1982, p.861), with 32,000 first-line troops and 82,500 recruited by 15 April 1948 (Pappe, p.52), well trained and largely Second World War veterans; against them about 2,500 Palestinian militiamen with old weapons, no artillery and no wireless, a typical village defended by 20-30 volunteers against 300-400 soldiers with tanks and artillery. The Arab Liberation Army numbered 3,155 (under Fawzi al-Qauwqji, as printed) but was dispersed, mostly inside the Arab State area in coordination with Trans-Jordan’s plans; the Moslem Brothers force did not exceed 500. By 15 May 1948, 213 villages including 6 towns besides West Jerusalem were depopulated, rising to 291 including 4 more towns by 11 June. Jewish-held land rose from 1,614,667 d. (6% of Palestine) bought under the Mandate, to 11% at Israel’s declaration, 78% by early 1949 and all of Palestine in 1967. No Arab force entered the area designated as the Jewish State: the Lebanese force (700, maximum 1,000) lost a dozen Lebanese villages; the Syrians (about 2,000) failed to take two settlements south of Tiberias; the Iraqis (from 2,500) defended Jinin but lost the villages around it and were withdrawn at Trans-Jordan’s request; the Trans-Jordanians (maximum 4,500, British-officered) held the Old City but withdrew from Lydda and Ramla, precipitating the expulsion of 60,000, and King Abdullah ceded about two dozen Wadi Ara villages outside the Rhodes negotiations. The Egyptian force (2,800, rising to 9,292, and in October 28,500 plus 1,109 Saudis, 1,675 Sudanese and 4,410 volunteers — printed as a total of 35,662, against 35,694 computed) lost all its territory except the Gaza Strip (360 km2, 1.3% of Palestine) under General Mawawi. The Israeli army grew to 74,450 (August 1948), 99,122 (October 1948) and 121,000 (beginning of 1949). An Israeli historian is quoted that Jewish forces never suffered numerical inferiority at any moment of the war; in the last phase Israel held about 4-to-1 superiority over Egypt, which no Arab force relieved.
Plunder and Destruction (lines 748-853): an “orgy of plunder and looting” by official bodies and individuals followed the invasion: 50,000 Arab homes looted, the Custodian of Enemy Property able to register only 509 carpets, women raped and killed and their fingers cut off for rings (Segev, p.86); Ben-Gurion’s War Diary entries on looting run from 10 February to 15 July 1948, and Moshe Simlansky (as printed) is quoted on the frenzy. Lydda and Ramla were the biggest prize: “The IDF loaded 1,800 trucks from Lydda alone” (Segev p.85); high-ranking Mapai leaders allegedly received “90% of abandoned property” (Segev, p.98). The Custodian’s register at one point held “45,000 houses, 7,000 shops, 500 workshops, more than 1,000 stores”, besides harvests and livestock. Unremovable property was burnt; crop burning began in May 1948 in the Negev (Morris 1990, p.181), then crops were harvested for Israel’s food shortage, with food and water cut off as economic war (Pappe, p.95). Preventing return was policy: demolish houses, poison wells, burn crops and shoot returning villagers at sight. Weitz distributed the land under his “Transfer” policy, and Ben-Gurion is quoted in October 1948 that the Arabs of Eretz Israel had “but one function left, to run away” (Morris, 1990, p.89). About 350,000 Jews were housed in Palestinian dwellings in the early 1950s — 160,000 newcomers in 1949 alone (Segev p.91). Falah’s (1996) field survey of Khalidi’s 418 villages: complete destruction 221 (52.9%), substantial destruction 134 (32.0%), partial demolition with some houses occupied by Jews 52 (12.5%), inaccessible 11 (02.6%, as printed).
War Crimes (lines 854-945): waging a war of aggression on the civilian population, expulsion, massacres, looting and destruction of property are all war crimes, with no time limitation on liability, attaching to official or unofficial bodies, groups or individuals. The chapter lists the Sixth Principle of the Nuremberg Charter — crimes against peace, war crimes and crimes against humanity, with their component acts as given — and states that all these crimes have been committed by various Israeli bodies, Jewish Agency and Israeli leaders bearing liability (Quigley, p.213). The permanent International Criminal Court resolved at the Rome Conference on 17 July 1998 (120 countries for, 7 against including Israel) has jurisdiction over genocide, crimes against humanity (including “deportation and forcible transfer of population”), war crimes (including transfer of the occupying power’s own civilians into occupied territory) and aggression, with no official immunity.
The Monetary Value of Seized Palestinian Property (lines 946-1031): the seizure is “the biggest planned and organized plunder in history”, though the loss of a homeland defies monetary measure. Hadawi (1988), assisted by the economist Kubursi (printed “Kubrusi” once in this chapter), estimated mobile and immobile property at £743.050 million, or US $2, 994.50 mi l l i o na t 1948 v a l u es — c l ose t o Y o u se f S a y i g h^{'} ses t ima t e, ab o u t ha l f t h e A r ab H i g h er C o mmi tt e e^{'} s an d m u c hhi g h er t han t h e C o n c i l ia t i o n C o mmi ss i o n^{'} s; " A dd in g h u man c a p i t a l l osses, t h e f i g u r er i ses t o - 1, 182.2 mi l l i o n " (a s p r in t e d) . A t 1£ =$ 4.03 (1948) with dollar inflation to 1998, the total is $559.3 billion. The governing principle is restitution in integrum (quoted from Quigley, p.209), the same Wiedergutmachung principle under which the German Federal Government paid DM 102 billion for Nazi crimes. Compensation falls in four categories (Hadawi and Kubursi, 1988): individual material assets, public material assets, individual non-material assets and public non-material assets; Table-9 (not reproduced) breaks down the components, and any monetary compensation must be reduced by the value of land and homes restored on return: “Homeland is not for sale.” War crimes are excluded from Resolution 194’s compensation scheme because they are regulated by international law (A/AC.25/W.81/Rev.2/annex ll, p.6, as printed).
The Right Of Return: A Basic Right (lines 1032-1125): the uprooting is presented as unprecedented in modern history. Count Folke Bernadotte is quoted that denying the victims return while Jewish immigrants flow in would be “an offence against the principles of elemental justice” (the quotation’s close is garbled in both copies; see Open questions). Three aspects make the right compelling. First, the refugees’ own will: the right is sacred to them, their family-and-village structure has survived dispersal, and a refugee’s grandchild still identifies with the original village. Second, the legal basis: neither the Balfour Declaration (1917), the Partition Plan (1947) nor the Armistice Agreements (1949) binds the Palestinians, who were not a party to them. Resolution 194 paragraph 11 is quoted in full (see Key passages) and glossed: the choice belongs to the refugees; the “earliest practicable date” was the cessation of hostilities, February-July 1949, so delay since then is a continuous violation; returnees get restitution plus compensation for loss and damage, and non-returnees get compensation for land and property, including 50 years’ exploitation and anguish, on the procedures adopted for Nazi victims; liability extends to the Provisional Government of Israel, successive Israeli governments, the Jewish Agency, the Haganah, the Irgun, the Stern Group, the Jewish National Fund “and others in Israel and abroad”. Beyond the resolutions: Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Magna Carta Ch. 42 (1215) as the text gives it, the 1949 Geneva Civilian Convention’s prohibition of “individual or mass forcible transfers… regardless of motive”, self-determination (applied to the Palestinian people explicitly from 1969, with resolution numbers given) and Resolution 3236 (22 November 1974). Occupation confers no sovereignty and neither occupation nor sovereignty diminishes private ownership, which survived the Ottoman surrender of sovereignty in 1920 and the Mandate.
Is the Right Of Return Feasible? (lines 1126-1235): against Peretz (1993, p.72), who calls return “neither feasible nor practical” and the villages “abandoned”, Abu Sitta argues Palestine is the best-documented land in the world — the Palestine Exploration Fund survey of 1871 (26 sheets, 15,000 names), Survey of Palestine maps 1920-1947 (reused by Israel with Arabic names erased), changes in 1949-1959 marked on British maps and recorded by Israel, Britain and the US, complete Israel Land Administration plot records, satellite mapping, and the British aerial survey of 1945-1946 (Photos 1-3, not reproduced: an occupied town, a depopulated village, a Negev tribal land “one of 99 such lands”, its cultivation belying the barren-desert claim). On demography (Table-10 and map, not reproduced): Area A, 8 natural regions, 1,683 sq. km. (8% of Israel), holds 68% of the Jews (2,924,000 in 1994), almost the pre-1948 Jewish area; Area B, 5 regions, 1,318 sq. km. (7%), holds 10% of the Jews and 20% of the Palestinians in Israel, so 78% of the Jews live in 15% of Israel; Area C, 17,325 sq. km., is essentially the refugees’ land, where only 154,000 rural Jews live. Area C’s density is 82 persons/sq. km., 4% of the centre’s. Lebanon-refugee return to Galilee would raise density by 1% in A, 6% in B and 17% in C, leaving Jews above 50% everywhere and barely touching the 76,000 rural Jews of the return areas; 90% of urban Jews live in just 9 towns, 3 of them Palestinian (Acre, Tiberias, Shafa Amr). Gaza-refugee return would be to almost empty land — rural Jews at 6 persons/sq. km. against Gaza’s density — with barely 79,000 rural Jews in the southern half and 553,000 urban Jews (two-thirds in Beer Sheba, Ashdod and Majdal-Ashqelon) who would benefit; density would rise 6% in A, 5% in B, 32% in C. Only 32,000 Jews control 14,320,000 dunums in the south (Efrat 1988, p.182); the returning Gaza refugees are fewer than the Russian immigrants admitted in the 1990s, whose admission Abu Sitta calls a cause of tension and a probable cause of a new war (Abu-Sitta 1998). Return would restore the severed Egypt-Jordan-Saudi land link through the Negev and the Jordan-Lebanon continuity through Galilee and the West Bank, and Palestinian farmers would offset the fall of agriculture from 11% of GNP (1950) to 3.5% (1993). Gaza’s density — 2500 persons/km2, or 4,200 on the net area (photo-4) — against 6 persons/km2 on the refugees’ land across the wire is “the root cause of the conflict”.
The Status of Palestinian Land in Israel (lines 1236-1330): seizure was organised by law. The Absentees’ Property Law of March 1950 transferred the owner’s rights to a Custodian of Absentee Property, liable for the value but not the return of the property (Lehn, p.131); Palestinians who remained, especially in the Negev, were relocated and declared absentee. The Development Authority (Transfer of Property) Law of July 1950 created an independent body that could transact Palestinian property only with a Jew or Jewish entity, shielding the government from the charge of confiscating abandoned property; Jewish bodies agreed “under no circumstances should the Arabs return to Israel”. The JNF-government dispute of 1950-1960 — the Fund claiming seized land for the Jewish people, the government for the state (Lehn p.108) — was settled on 25 July 1960 by the Basic Law: Israel-Lands, the Israel-Lands Law and the Israel-Lands Administration Law: state ownership, JNF rules of Jews-only transactions, and single administration by the Israel Land Administration (ILA). Title in 1961 (ILA Report 1962, quoted by Lehn p.114): State and Development Authority 15,205,000 d.; JNF 3,507,000 d.; printed subtotal 18,775,000 d. (the components sum to 18,712,000, computed); private 1,548,000 d.; total 20,323,000 d. The ILA thus administers 92.6% of Israel, Palestinian property leased to Jewish tenants who hold no title, on 49-year leases expiring in 1998. The 1997 Sharon-Eitan ordinances to sell kibbutz-rented Palestinian land to builders and Jews worldwide — the “Great Israel Land Grab in the words of Ha’aretz” (Abu-Sitta, 1998) — are presented as a grave danger, answered on 16 September 1998 by an Arab League resolution urging a UN fact-finding mission and a UN Custodian of Palestinian property in Israel.
The Israeli Position (lines 1331-1416): Israel prevented return by every means including shooting returnees as “infiltrators”, thwarted the CCP’s efforts, and Ben-Gurion engineered the 1956 tripartite campaign against Egypt and proposed relocating refugees in Sinai, Jordan and even Iraq. The Israeli claims — self-defence against invasion, departure on Arab orders, unfindable village boundaries — are “sheer fabrication” on Israeli sources. The legal argument that the right applies only to citizens of the state (Peretz, p.70; Lapidoth cited by Quigley, p.210) is answered with the robber who changes the name-plate on a stolen house: expulsion does not deprive a people of citizenship or of return. Peretz (p.73) is quoted that “well-informed Palestinians are aware that conditions have so changed… that an actual return is no longer possible”, envisaging only an enclave, the West Bank or Gaza, or a token return (“(Lam Sharnl)”, as printed); Abu Sitta finds no evidence for this on any significant scale. On “Jewish character”: Israel must choose between being a Jewish or a democratic state; Mallison (p.134) is quoted that the Jewish character is a euphemism for discriminatory statutes and that the UN is no more obliged to maintain Zionism in Israel than apartheid in South Africa. Only 4 million Jews out of 16 [million] chose to live in Israel voluntarily; “The Right of Return to the Palestinians is a dire necessity. To the Jews, it is an option, a luxury.” Internally, Israeli Palestinians are 25% of the Israeli Jews in number (as printed) and 45% of those under 20. The linkage to Sephardic Jews who left Iraq, the Maghreb and Yemen is rejected on four grounds: no comparable international recognition; their claims lie against their former countries; offsetting does not arise against Israel; and Israel arranged their transfer to populate the emptied Palestinian towns and villages (Ben-Gurion, in Segev, p.91), making them beneficiaries who should pay compensation, not receive it.
Resettlement Schemes (lines 1417-1500): resettlement rests on the assumptions that Palestinians are not a people, had no country called Palestine, arrived recently, were mostly nomads without ties to the land, and are backward and undeserving; against them the Jews as a people-being-reconstituted are “civilized” and develop the land better, so the end of the Palestinian people is “a miraculous act of God and a victory for civilization” — “This zero sum equation is the root of all evil in this conflict.” The idea originates in the Zionist policy of “Transfer” (Masalha 1992, 1997); Western schemes from Thicknesse (1949, printed “Thickness” in this chapter) proposed resettlement in Syria and Iraq, possibly through UNRWA. Peretz (1993) endorses limited return to a toothless state and limited compensation offset against Jewish claims from Arab countries; Heller (1983) proposes resettlement and limited return of 750,000 of 2,700,000 eligible (for 1980) to a nominal state. Zureik (1996) reviews the schemes, including Shlomo Gazit’s semi-official proposal: finality, renunciation of the right of return, dismantling UNRWA and abolition of refugee status, in exchange for an Israeli “moral-psychological acknowledgement” delivered through a UN resolution abolishing Resolution 194 paragraph 11. Arzt’s report is attacked for doctored population tables (her 1995 figures underestimate Palestinians by about one million against Abu Sitta’s 7,025,000 min.-7,590,000 max.) and for a plan of permanent dispersal: a new transfer of 1,800,000 (half to Europe and the Americas, half to the West Bank), half of Gaza’s refugees transferred again, Palestinian identity papers in exchange for dropping the land claim, and 75,000 readmitted after vetting — 8,000 original refugees in 1948 terms, against the 300,000 Truman proposed in 1949 and the 100,000 Sharett promised (as printed) for Israel’s UN admission and never allowed. A joint proposal by a Palestinian writer and an ex-Mossad officer (Ha’aretz, 9 September 1998) trading acknowledgement of Israeli guilt for conceding that return is “impossible” is dismissed as a lone view (rebutted in ‘The Mountain to Climb’, Al-Ahram Weekly, No. 402, 5-11 Nov 1998). All the schemes failed because they deny the right to return home.
Practical Steps for the Return of the Refugees (lines 1501-1594): all seized Palestinian land is leased to Jews and its title is still held by the Palestinians: “There is no Jew who can produce a valid title to a Palestinian plot of land.” Israel’s legal network exists only to prevent return, and that makes return administratively simple — a single agreement with the Development Authority and its employer, the Custodian for the Absentee Property, at the 1998 lease expiry, instead of thousands of individual court cases. To protect the rights, a Palestine Land Society is proposed (Abu-Sitta 1998): it would represent Palestinians’ property rights everywhere including in Israel; document, recover, protect, maintain and develop Palestinian land; act as custodian until individual owners are identified and handed their property (no land to a non-Palestinian); be non-political, cooperating with the PLO, the PNA, the UN and governments; have a general assembly of 1,500 elected members representing about 500 depopulated villages and towns; and have an indefinite term — the Jews already have the JNF (1906), WOJAC (1977) and WJRO (1992). Return would be arranged collectively in village units, villages of 4-5 large families holding their land through PLS shares pending valuation of individual shares. UNRWA would continue until all refugees return and then become a development organization under UNDP. The whole operation would run under the UN Conciliation Commission of Palestine, custodian of the refugees’ rights (abbreviated “CCP” in the text). The refugees do not regard Israel’s sovereignty in itself as a problem; they retain Palestinian identity regardless of any acquired citizenship, and in all other respects have the rights of citizens of a democratic state.
Summary and Conclusions (lines 1595-1694): the “Palestinian Holocaust is unsurpassed in history” — a country occupied, emptied, its landmarks obliterated and its destruction hailed as a miraculous act of God, by a premeditated, internationally supported plan still maintained, “the ugliest crime of modern times”. The Western-fed myths (departure on Arab orders, the Arab Goliath, Israeli self-defence, infeasibility) are stripped of credibility by released documents and new research: 89% left under direct military assault, 10% under psychological war, 1% on their own initiative, and only during fighting — about 65% before the Arab armies arrived, with 59% of the villages cleansed 27 days after their entry. Israel was declared on 11% of Palestine on 14 May 1948 with no borders announced; Morris (1987, p.3) is quoted that by July “Israel has won its war for survival, at least in the short term, and that subsequent IDF offensives were geared to securing the political-military future of the Jewish state”; expansion took 78% of Palestine by the 1949 Armistice Agreements. Close to five million refugees remain dispossessed. Feasibility is restated: former sites are locatable; the sparsely populated 85% of Israel can accommodate 20% of the Jews (17% of them in a few towns) plus present and returning Palestinians, at half the West Bank’s density and one-seventh of Gaza’s; rural Israel, “the traditional home of 4,942,000 Palestinian refugees, is practically empty”, with 154,000 Jews controlling 17,445,852 dunums, 32,000 of them in the south controlling 14,320,000 d. Reiner (Ha’aretz, September 23, 1998) is quoted on Arab farmers as the kibbutz fades. Return raises no social problem (village units of 4-5 families, PLS shareholding) and no legal problem (leases expiring in 1998, custody transferable in a single act). The closing argument on international responsibility is defective in both copies (see Open questions); its surviving sentences state that in the 1991 Gulf War, the Bosnian conflict and Kosovo the international community used all means to implement return for expelled refugees and should do so again, and end: “For real and lasting peace to prevail, the Right of Return must be implemented.”
References (lines 1695-1863): the full bibliography is recorded in the reading notes. It runs from Abu-Lughod (1971) and Abu Sitta’s own works (1996-1998, including the 1998 Register and map) through Arzt (1997), Ben-Gurion’s War Diary (Arabic translation, 1993), Brand (1988), Dajani (1947), Efrat (1988), Falah (1996), Finkelstein (1995), Flapan (1987), Hadawi (1988), Heller (1983), Hudaib (1985), Khalidi (1987, 1988, 1992), Lehn and Davis (1988), Levenberg (1993), Lorch (1961), Mallison and Mallison (1980), Masalha (1992, 1997), McDowall (1989, 1994), Morris (1987, 1990), Palumbo (1987), Peretz (1956, 1993), Quigley (1990), Sanbar (1987, 1998), Segev (1986), Shakib (1986), Shihadeh (1999), Shlaim (1990), Thicknesse ([1949]) and Zureik (1996), with the slips recorded under Open questions.

Key passages

“By carving out a state in Palestine for their unwanted Jews, the victorious powers effectually ignited a conflict which emptied Palestine of half its Arab population.” (Palestinian Right of Return: Sacred, Legal, and Possible, lines 144-147, Publishers’ Note)
“An expanded list* of 531 localities ethnically cleansed during the 1948 Holocaust, exceeding in number previously published lists, is compiled.” (lines 295-297)
“Between ourselves it must be clear that there is no room for both peoples together in this country.” (Joseph Weitz, as quoted by Abu Sitta, lines 505-512)
“resolves that the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of, or damage to, property which, under principles of international law or in equity, should be made good by the governments or authorities responsible.” (Resolution 194, paragraph 11, as quoted, lines 1075-1083)
“Homeland is not for sale.” (lines 1024-1030)
“The Right of Return to the Palestinians is a dire necessity. To the Jews, it is an option, a luxury.” (lines 1370-1380)
“There is no Jew who can produce a valid title to a Palestinian plot of land.” (lines 1555-1560)
“For real and lasting peace to prevail, the Right of Return must be implemented.” (lines 1685-1692)

Evidence the work relies on

Abu Sitta’s own compiled database of 531 depopulated localities (names, grid references, districts, populations, land areas, depopulation dates, exodus causes, offensives, defenders, massacres), built largely on Morris (1987) and Khalidi (1992) and cross-checked against Al-Arif, Nijm and Muammer and Saleh, and published as The Palestinian Nakba 1948, The Register of Depopulated Localities in Palestine (Palestine Return Centre, 1998) (lines 295-321, lines 1763-1768).
The Mandate Village Statistics of 1944/1945, upgraded at Khalidi’s 3.8% annual natural increase; Al-Arif (1933) and Dajani (1947) for the Beer Sheba Bedouin; Abu-Lughod (1971), Brand (1988), McDowall (1994) and Peretz for total Palestinian population, with UNRWA’s 1998 registration figures (lines 385-465).
Hadawi (1988), with Kubursi, for land ownership, the Jarvis/Palestine Conciliation Commission comparison and the monetary valuation of seized property; the Israel Land Administration Report (Jerusalem, 1962, in Hebrew) quoted by Lehn for 1961 land title; Lehn and Davis, The Jewish National Fund (1988), for the seizure laws and the JNF-state dispute (lines 445-455, lines 1005-1030, lines 1270-1300).
Israeli sources as Abu Sitta presents them: Ben-Gurion’s War Diary (looting entries, the al-Dawayima rumour, force totals), Morris (1987, 1990) on exodus causes, massacres and the “run away” statement, Segev on looting, the Custodian’s register and housing of immigrants in Palestinian homes, Shlaim, Pappe and Flapan on Plan Dalet and the war, and Hadashot reporting (13 August 1993; 24 August 1984) (throughout).
Legal authorities as the work presents them: Resolution 194 (1948) and Resolution 3236 (1974), the Universal Declaration of Human Rights Article 13, Magna Carta Ch. 42, the 1949 Geneva Civilian Convention, the Nuremberg Charter’s Sixth Principle, the Rome Statute of 1998, and the commentaries of Quigley (1990) and Mallison and Mallison (1980) (lines 854-945, lines 1032-1125).
The works argued against: Peretz (1993) on feasibility, citizenship and token return; Heller (1983); Gazit’s semi-official proposal as reviewed by Zureik (1996); and Arzt’s Refugees into Citizens (1997), whose tables Abu Sitta audits against his own population figures (lines 1126-1135, lines 1417-1500).

Analysis

Method: the book is an argument built on a database. Its distinctive move is to expand the unit of counting — towns and, above all, Beer Sheba tribal lands, which earlier lists omitted — and then to let the expanded totals (531 localities, 804,767 refugees, 17,166,831 dunums of cleansed-village land) carry the historical, military and legal chapters and the feasibility demography. Every later claim is keyed to the same figures, so the internal inconsistencies recorded under Open questions (the two 1948 refugee totals, the land-title subtotal, the Egyptian force total, the assessed-village arithmetic) sit at the load-bearing points of the argument.
Perspective: the work is advocacy scholarship by the founder of the Palestine Land Society and a former Palestine National Council member, published by the Palestine Return Centre; its terms are its own — the 1948 events are “the Palestinian Holocaust (al-Nakba)” throughout, Israeli operations are “ethnic cleansing”, and the opposing literature (Peretz, Heller, Arzt, Gazit) is treated as resettlement advocacy rooted in the Transfer idea. Its evidence is nonetheless drawn predominantly from the Israeli and Mandate sources it cites (Morris, Segev, Ben-Gurion’s diary, the ILA report), which the text repeatedly stresses.
Limits, as the file stands: the tables and map on which the phase counts, district totals and Areas A/B/C demography rest (Tables 1-11, Table-10 in particular) are named but not reproduced in either copy, so those figures can be checked only where the prose states them; several click-here links to rebuttals of the broadcasts and other myths point outside the file and their contents are not in it; the Summary’s international-responsibility paragraph is spliced in the original web page itself, and the Bernadotte quotation’s close is garbled in both copies; and the work’s legal conclusions (continuous violation since 1949, return plus compensation, no offsetting) are Abu Sitta’s readings of the instruments he quotes, presented as settled law rather than as one side of a legal dispute.

People, organizations, places and events (links)

Salman Abu Sitta, Palestine Return Centre, Palestine Land Society, Sami Hadawi, Walid Khalidi, Benny Morris, Folke Bernadotte, Joseph Weitz, Deir Yassin, Dawaymeh, Sa’sa, UNRWA, Palestine Conciliation Commission, UN General Assembly Resolution 194, Jewish Agency, Haganah, Irgun, Stern Group, Jewish National Fund, Israel Land Administration, Absentee Property Law, Dalet Plan, Don Peretz, Nur Masalha, Elia Zureik, Donna Arzt, International Criminal Court

Concepts (links)

Right of Return, Nakba, Ethnic Cleansing, Transfer, Present Absentees, Self-determination

How it relates to other sources

The book is the argumentative companion to Abu Sitta’s Register, ingested here as The Palestinian Nakba 1948 — The Register of Depopulated Localities in Palestine (the 2025 second edition of The Palestinian Nakba 1948): the 531-locality database compiled in the Compilation chapter is the Register’s database, and the Register’s totals (531 fully depopulated localities; 4,940,269 refugees estimated for 1998) stand close to this book’s 531 localities and 4,942,121 refugees for 1998 — a difference of 1,852 (computed) that neither text explains; see Open questions.
Abu Sitta’s Chapter 1 in For Palestine — Essays from the Tom Hurndall Memorial Lecture Group, The Key to Peace: The Return of the Refugees (taken from a Palestine Land Society website article), restates this book’s core in miniature: Resolution 194 affirmed over 100 times, the Areas A/B/C demography, and the Lebanon (362,000) and Gaza (760,000) return scenarios. The numbers differ in presentation — Parker’s chapter gives scenario head-counts that this book’s feasibility chapter does not state in the same form — and both stand as printed in their places.
On Dawaymeh, Pappe gives the massacre under 28 October 1948 with a population swollen to about 6,000 by refugees and a mukhtar’s count of 455 missing (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, PDF p.230-231); Abu Sitta dates it to the afternoon of Friday 29 October 1948, gives the village population as 4,300, and records three killing counts side by side — the Mukhtar’s list of 580, the Hadashot correspondent’s estimate of 332, and Ben-Gurion’s diary’s “70-80”. Both accounts stand; the date and population differences are held on the Dawaymeh page.
On Resolution 194, Abu Sitta’s reading — return plus compensation and restitution for returnees, the earliest practicable date fixed to February-July 1949 — is the maximal reading among the sources here; compare Rethinking Statehood in Palestine Chapter 8, which grounds the same right in Palestinian nationality and the UNCCP’s own analysis of paragraph 11, and Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation, which quotes the same paragraph without Abu Sitta’s dating gloss.
His land figures extend the chain documented in Stateless Citizenship (2013) and For Palestine — Essays from the Tom Hurndall Memorial Lecture Group for the Absentee Property Law: where Molavi gives 4.2-5.8 million dunums as the range of assessments for land Israel defines as abandoned, Abu Sitta’s cleansed-village land alone is 17,166,831 dunums, the difference being the Beer Sheba tribal lands and village lands his database counts and the narrower legal category does not; both stand as their sources give them.

Open questions

Two 1948 refugee totals in one chapter: “The sum of refugees thus calculated is shown to be 804,767” (lines 385-393) against 804,069 in the projection table of the same chapter (lines 425-445). Both are recorded as printed and not reconciled.
The 1961 land-title table (lines 1285-1300): State and Development Authority 15,205,000 d. plus JNF 3,507,000 d. sum to 18,712,000 d. (computed), not the printed subtotal 18,775,000 d.; the printed subtotal plus private land 1,548,000 d. does give the printed total 20,323,000 d.
The Egyptian force total (lines 715-725): 28,500 + 1,109 + 1,675 + 4,410 = 35,694 (computed), against the printed “total Arab force of 35,662 men”.
The assessed-village arithmetic in Why the Refugees Left and the Summary: 442 (89%) + 50 (10%) + 5 (1%) + 35 undetermined = 532 (computed), one more than the book’s 531 localities; the percentages are consistent with the 497 determined cases (computed), but the text does not say so.
The Areas A, B and C areas sum to 20,326 sq. km. (computed) against the book’s total area of Israel of 20,323,000 d.; and the Summary’s “154,000 Jews control 17,445,852 donums” (lines 1655-1665) sits beside the feasibility chapter’s Area C of 17,325 sq. km. for the same 154,000 rural Jews, with no explanation of the difference.
The monetary chapter’s “Adding human capital losses, the figure rises to -1,182.2 million” (lines 1005-1015) prints a minus sign and no currency; whether the intended figure is £1,182.2 million cannot be settled from the file.
The Bernadotte quotation closes, in both the text copy and the original HTML, with the words ‘rooted in the land for centuries’, followed by ‘II’ and the document reference ‘ON Doc Al648, 1948’ (lines 1055-1065) — all as printed in the web original; the document reference cannot be recovered from the file.
The Summary and Conclusions paragraph beginning “The returning refugees may be under the sovereignty of Israel. They may acquire Israeli or other citizenship, but they shall always Palestine and creation of Israel, and has, through UNRWA, provided meager means of survival for the refugees” (lines 1675-1685) is spliced identically in the text copy and the original HTML: a passage is missing after “they shall always”, and the sentence’s beginning, apparently about retaining Palestinian identity and the international community’s responsibility, cannot be recovered from either copy.
Forenames printed as “nan” in both copies, in the text and the References: “Amitzur nan” (lines 680-690; References lines 1818-1822) and “Pappe. nan” (References lines 1836-1840). The References give the entries as ‘nan, Amitzur’, The Origin of the Arab-Israeli Arms Race, Macmillan, 1996, and ‘Pappe. nan’, The Making of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1947-1951, I.B. Tauris, London and New York, 1992. The bytes of both copies read “nan”; the name it stands in place of does not appear in the file and cannot be recovered from the file.
Other slips as printed, byte-verified in the text copy and held, not corrected: “ll June 1948” for 11 June (Compilation chapter); “The largest percentage of the refugees cam from” (Unfolding chapter); “80 to l00 Arabs” with a lower-case L (al-Dawayima); “lootedon” (Plunder chapter); “02.6%” (Falah table); “Thickness (1949)” in Resettlement Schemes against “Thicknesse” in the References; “(Lam Sharnl)” in The Israeli Position; “a. people-being-reconstituted” in Resettlement Schemes; “annex ll” in the Monetary chapter; “The Councilon Foreign Relations” and “NotonlyDeirYassin” in the References; the Summary chapter’s web address is printed “summery-and-conclusions” in the text copy header for that chapter.
The Refugee total for 1998 differs between this book (4,942,121) and the Register as ingested (4,940,269), a difference of 1,852 (computed); neither text explains it, and the Register’s 531 fully depopulated localities plus 662 partially depopulated localities have no counterpart breakdown in this book.
Tables 1-11, Table-10’s four sections, the Areas map and Photos 1-4 are named but not reproduced in either copy; the figures depending on them are recorded only as the prose states them. The asterisk on “list*” in the Compilation chapter has no footnote in the file.
“CCP” is the abbreviation the text uses for the UN Conciliation Commission for Palestine (elsewhere in this wiki the Palestine Conciliation Commission); whether the abbreviation is the book’s own or the web presentation’s cannot be settled from the file. The Custodian is named both “Custodian of Enemy Property” (Plunder chapter, for the 1948 register of looted property) and “Custodian of Absentee Property” / “Custodian for the Absentee Property” (Status and Practical Steps chapters); the text does not mark whether these are the same office at different dates.

Coverage

lines 1-1864 of 1864, read in full

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